i.e. it is not the 'because' that is really the focus we should be looking at, it is the way the subsequent word is a distillation of a clause
― thighs without a face (c sharp major), Friday, 22 November 2013 19:30 (ten years ago) link
So you locate the ellipsis you describe in "because" and not also in "EMOTIONS"?
― Aimless, Friday, 22 November 2013 19:31 (ten years ago) link
that was an xp
i disagree with aimless's theory too -- it is too casual to be that widely adopted
it'll go away like the vomit in everyone's mouth went away
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Friday, 22 November 2013 19:32 (ten years ago) link
ha some people still have a lil vomit in their mouths and when you hear about it you feel a little pity because so uncool
― lag∞n, Friday, 22 November 2013 19:34 (ten years ago) link
so it will be thrown under the bus, you are saying?
― Aimless, Friday, 22 November 2013 19:34 (ten years ago) link
when you hear about it you feel a little pity because so uncoolexactly -- only the too late adopters will use it and they will out themselves as deeply uncool
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Friday, 22 November 2013 19:36 (ten years ago) link
that little bit of vomit shows up on my facebook wall sometimes
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 22 November 2013 19:38 (ten years ago) link
and i'm guessing that at least 4/5 times it's a late adopter, if not 100% of the time
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Friday, 22 November 2013 19:39 (ten years ago) link
as does "best. (x). ever." (which will probably never go away unfortunately)
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Friday, 22 November 2013 19:39 (ten years ago) link
cataloguing people's language tics is why i can still find facebook useful/amusingit's like a living corpus of language in use
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Friday, 22 November 2013 19:48 (ten years ago) link
a cyber corpus
― Aimless, Friday, 22 November 2013 19:51 (ten years ago) link
ilx too on a boring day
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Friday, 22 November 2013 19:52 (ten years ago) link
Hm, I used "because" as a preposition for the second time on ILX ever just a few hours ago (sorry LL)
― Sir Lord Baltimora (Myonga Vön Bontee), Friday, 22 November 2013 20:45 (ten years ago) link
i only like it to watch the spread of adoption
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Friday, November 22, 2013 1:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Yeah, me too, basically.
― Geoffrey Schweppes (jaymc), Friday, 22 November 2013 20:50 (ten years ago) link
http://fistintheair.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/childish-gambino-tweet.jpg
― slam dunk, Saturday, 23 November 2013 15:26 (ten years ago) link
oh no
― lag∞n, Saturday, 23 November 2013 15:28 (ten years ago) link
i rest my case
― twist boat veterans for stability (k3vin k.), Saturday, 23 November 2013 15:28 (ten years ago) link
the "because internet" construction doesn't seem like a faux-naif thing to me, at least not in the way that it was discussed in this thread. dayo's observations were otm: this voice at its most characteristic is a response to the writer's awareness of their limitations -- of all the conditioning that comes to bear on their claims, as well as the impossibility of ever really stepping outside all of this stuff to talk "objectively"... the same old derridean impasses they teach every english major -- and it expresses a desire for an "innocent" subject position. culture paradoxically comes to seem alienating when one recognizes it as a "total" system. for these bloggers, becoming a cultural critic is not about their love of culture, but their fear of it. trends, phenomena, etc. need to be kept at arm's length and to do this you need to keep an eye on them. by rendering cultural phenomena visible, one can forget -- for today -- that culture itself permeates everything, has no borders, and is invisible.
people who say "because internet" are evincing a level of knowingness that is the opposite of the faux-naif blog voice. where's the anxiety? people who say this seem to think they can make generalizations about the meanings and origins of things and be correct.
― tɹi.ʃɪp (Treeship), Saturday, 23 November 2013 16:16 (ten years ago) link
people who say this seem to think they can make generalizations about the meanings and origins of things and be correct.
i think that it's more that they expect their readership to understand just what the ellipsis they are making would have contained - also, not "origins of things" so much as "reasons for things".
― thighs without a face (c sharp major), Saturday, 23 November 2013 17:13 (ten years ago) link
bored arrogance
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Saturday, 23 November 2013 17:19 (ten years ago) link
+ insidery
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Saturday, 23 November 2013 17:20 (ten years ago) link
Isn't it mostly a technique for compression needed b/c of character limits for Twitter and texting?
People pick up habits there and apply them to their writing elsewhere, even on ILX iirc.
― Plasmon, Saturday, 23 November 2013 18:27 (ten years ago) link
Isn't it mostly a technique for compression needed b/c of character limits for Twitter and texting?it's one reason people give, but it's definitely not the only reason people use it (esp the later adopters)
People pick up habits there and apply them to their writing elsewhere, even on ILX iirc.more specifically, people assimilate, or attempt to
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Saturday, 23 November 2013 19:01 (ten years ago) link
"b/c of" has fewer characters than "because", "bc" would have fewer still.
ll otm itt because sociolinguistics
― famous for hits! (seandalai), Saturday, 23 November 2013 21:19 (ten years ago) link
Thank you
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Saturday, 23 November 2013 21:23 (ten years ago) link
otm
― christmas candy bar (al leong), Saturday, 23 November 2013 21:41 (ten years ago) link
the dfw-lite essay style seems to not be about condensing ideas though, almost the opposite.
― tɹi.ʃɪp (Treeship), Saturday, 23 November 2013 22:56 (ten years ago) link
would you prefer if there were a separate thread for every syntactic feature of "blog voice"? i'm pretty sure this thread is standing in as a place to put all related data and observations, however tedious it all might be.
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Saturday, 23 November 2013 23:14 (ten years ago) link
i guess not. i think the thread topic is interesting though.
― tɹi.ʃɪp (Treeship), Saturday, 23 November 2013 23:17 (ten years ago) link
"X because Y" doesn't express anything other than "I read those blogs/threads too" imo, same with shibaspeak, same with vikings, etc etc. The effect varies as like with all memes; sometimes it contributes to community coherence, sometimes it comes across as try-hard, sometimes nobody notices.
― famous for hits! (seandalai), Sunday, 24 November 2013 01:04 (ten years ago) link
i'm ok with people using language this way
― Tip from Tae Kwon Do: (crüt), Sunday, 24 November 2013 02:12 (ten years ago) link
it's gonna happen regardless of whether or not we like it; my only point is that it helps to be aware that it is a linguistic manifestation of a socially-motivated urge/desire.
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Sunday, 24 November 2013 02:17 (ten years ago) link
Christ.Yesterday I realised I ended txt message to someone with ...NOT without even thinking and I wanted to kill myself once I realised.
― taxi tomato or bag tomato (Trayce), Sunday, 24 November 2013 06:38 (ten years ago) link
Why don't I just have a cow man and be done with it.
― taxi tomato or bag tomato (Trayce), Sunday, 24 November 2013 06:39 (ten years ago) link
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simplest-punctuation-mark-has-become-sign-anger
― thighs without a face (c sharp major), Monday, 25 November 2013 22:23 (ten years ago) link
all of this makes me hate language
― akm, Tuesday, 26 November 2013 02:06 (ten years ago) link
(grits teeth)
you. musn't. hate. language.
― Aimless, Tuesday, 26 November 2013 02:14 (ten years ago) link
http://theoriginalwinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/gambino-because-the-internet-597x322.jpg
― Mordy , Tuesday, 3 December 2013 22:01 (ten years ago) link
I'm a little baffled by the way people have written about the "because" thing.
The origin of it seems super-clear to me -- it started as a way of mocking that childish, hand-waving thing people do when they don't have a coherent argument, so they fall back on repeating a single word that's supposed to magically justify their position. How do you defend your obnoxious views about gender? Because, umm, like, EVOLUTION. Why are you opposed to progressive taxation? Because, you know, FREEDOM. And then people started using it in a SELF-mocking way, or to be faux-evasive ("that actor I like does a nude scene in this dumb movie? I need to see this because REASONS"), and then it started happening all the time, etc.
I think it's actually a pretty elegant construction -- removing extra words to reveal that someone's dumb argument basically boils down to a single noun -- and a useful piece of sarcasm, but only if it's referring to something that's actually behaving in that hand-wavy dumb-argument way. The problem with overused internet-talk constructions is that people get so taken with how clever the phrasing sounds that they start using it willy-nilly in places where it doesn't even make sense. It's like if someone came up with a really clever mean insult for, say, bald guys, and people thought it was such a sick burn that they started using it on everyone, insulting dudes with full heads of hair, and eventually it just becomes some stupid thing people always say, totally disconnected from the point it was originally designed to make.
P.S. I am a bald guy, that is why I used that example
― ንፁህ አበበ (nabisco), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 23:21 (ten years ago) link
P.S. I am a bald guy, that is why I used that example because self-deprecation.
― Geoffrey Schweppes (jaymc), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 23:28 (ten years ago) link
I mean, the main thing that bothers me about the "because" formulation is that you can use it in this glib, sneering, bullying way to dismiss valid arguments. You could write a whole earnest, well-reasoned BOOK arguing that we should do something or other to combat terrorism, and someone can come along and go "hahaha apparently we should do this BECAUSE TERRORISM," as if you're the idiot with no real argument. A lot of popular internet phraseology feels like that to me -- it equips people to imitate the sound of being clever, savvy, righteous, and penetrating even when they don't have any genuine cleverness or savvy to bring to bear.
― ንፁህ አበበ (nabisco), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 23:32 (ten years ago) link
A lot of popular internet phraseology feels like that to me -- it equips people to imitate the sound of being clever, savvy, righteous, and penetrating even when they don't have any genuine cleverness or savvy to bring to bear.
U mad, breh?
― 乒乓, Tuesday, 3 December 2013 23:38 (ten years ago) link
"Back in my day, when you wanted to roll your eyes at something, you needed actual FRIENDS there to see it and agree with you"
― ንፁህ አበበ (nabisco), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 23:43 (ten years ago) link
it's definitely a facet of a cultivated personality. i don't know what else to call it other than a sociolinguistic marker of "i am like this" with this = whatever personality trait that person is trying to project.
― sweat pea (La Lechera), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 23:47 (ten years ago) link
nabisco otm.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 23:58 (ten years ago) link
A bunch've art/fashion people are trending towards the following voice - "iz fukign me of taht no1 evn wunt 2 wriet liek hella trol dense theory liek az if itz a big dael idk." / "liek i wol wunt2 raed a local public8n ov loek #theoretical stanpoinz by a range ov ppl. y iz eg evry art public8n so watery" / &c - but it's probably an alt-lit thing, right?
― etc, Wednesday, 4 December 2013 00:20 (ten years ago) link
That's not the actual voice is it
― 乒乓, Wednesday, 4 December 2013 00:22 (ten years ago) link
Are those verbatim quotes
I do not believe for a second that "a bunch've art/fashion people are trending toward" that voice.
― signed, J.P. Morgan CEO (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 4 December 2013 00:24 (ten years ago) link